Metal Probes First To Detect Dopamine Receptors

Hong Kong Baptist University researchers have developed what they are calling the first iridium(III)-based probes for imaging dopamine receptors in living cells. The discovery expands understanding of dopamine receptors in carcinogenesis, which could lead to methods of early cancer detection technology.

Dopamine is a critical neurotransmitter in the central nervous system and plays key roles in motivation, cognition, and motor control. While dopamine receptors have long been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, recent evidence has linked dopamine receptors also with various cancers, including lung, breast and colon cancers. Traditional detection methods for dopamine receptors include the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). However, such methods suffer from high cost, incompatibility with living systems, and are not suitable for the real-time study of the biological role of dopamine receptors.

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The metal-based probes developed by Dr. Edmond Ma Dik-lung, Associate Professor of the Department of Chemistry of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) and his team can selectively bind to dopamine receptors on lung cancer cells, “lighting up” the cells and making them visible.

The probes enable the monitoring and tracking of dopamine receptors in living cells in a real-time and in a non-invasive fashion. Moreover, the experiment results demonstrated that the imaging color intensity was correlates with the expression levels of dopamine receptors on cancer cells. These probes could help elucidate the role of dopamine receptors in the pathogenesis of cancers and offer a potential diagnostic tool for the early screening of cancers. Importantly, the metal-based probes avoid the problems of poor photo stability and photobleaching that limit conventional fluorescent imaging dyes.

This diagram shows the use of the metal-based probe for imaging and tracking of dopamine receptors in living cancer cells.

Dr. Ma said, “Early detection is crucial for improving the survival rate of hard-to-treat cancers such as lung cancer, which is associated with dopamine receptor expression. For instance, data from the American Cancer Society shows that patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have a five-year survival rate of about 92%, but this drops to only about 36% when the cancer has progressed to an advanced stage. We therefore believe that these dopamine receptor probes show great promise for the development of molecular diagnostic tools for the early detection of cancer.”

Dr Ma added that because the probes could successfully track the internalization process of dopamine receptors in cells, they also represent powerful tools for studying the role of dopamine receptors in the pathogenesis of cancer.

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